Me and My Motorbike

My motorbike and I had a bit of a rough week this week.  Started off on Monday driving about an hour to the other side of the island to go to a massive Thai warehouse store called SuperCheap, where my fellow teachers said was the best place to get school supplies.  So I went and so far, I haven't really had any trouble driving on the other side of the road but driving the opposite way around a rotary for the first time definitely confused me.  Let's just say I had a few near misses with a pickup truck.  I proceeded to get caught in the rain and when it rains in Phuket, it rains harder than I've ever seen, so pulled my bike over for a while because I couldn't see anything and when I saw Thai people pulling over, I figured I probably should too.  Of course I was wearing a white tank top and my eighty cent rain poncho doesn't actually do much so when I arrived at the store, not only was I the only white person there, I was wearing a soaking wet white tank top and a damp flowered skirt. Awesome.  Blended right into the crowd.

Tuesday, I headed to the hospital after school to get checked up on and got in my first motorbike accident.  Except I'm not sure if I would consider it an accident but I did hit someone.  I was at a stoplight and it turned green and everyone went and the lady to the right of me decided she wanted to go left so she swerved in front of me and then she decided she wanted to go right so she cut in front of me again (this is all in a matter of 4 seconds) and I hit the back of her bike.  However, I'm starting to think this is a normal occurance because she didn't even stop she just looked at the back of her seat and kept driving so I was like okay I guess I'll just keep going.  Not such a huge deal?  Just when I thought things couldn't get much worse, I was driving myself to a Thai hospital and I get in an accident (kind of), I parked my bike and when getting off my bike, I accidentally brushed up against the bike next to me and burned my leg on their exhaust pipe. What a lovely day. 

Wednesday, I went through THREE red lights!  One of them right in front of a police station.  Might I add, I ran them all purposely because most times it is actually safer to go thru red lights then to stop because the likelihood of someone hitting you from behind for stopping when no one else does is pretty high.  I survived the rest of the week and I think me and my motorbike are back on good terms.  I should name him.

I realized that I haven't actually really posted pictures of my house except for one of my bedroom the first week so below are pictures of our street, Nancy and my house and Courtney and Shawn's house, which is three doors down from us.  It's a nice dead end street that seems to be safe and has a number of young families.   Normal sights for our street include little Thai boys running up and down the street shooting each other with toy guns and running into our driveways to try to shoot us when we're in our house, about ten cats that try to get into our house every night and sleep on the seat of my motorbike, and multiple squished, dead frogs on the street.  I think that pretty much defines Jasmine Street.
 

Jasmine Street - ten minute walk to the beach



Nancy and My House

View from our front door

Our kitchen - cabinets would be nice but hey it's Thailand, we're lucky we have burners to cook on

View from the kitchen to the front door - Nancy's room, my room and the bathroom are to the right

Sad display of Christmas in our house - a tree I brought from the Dollar Store in Providence, stockings mailed from Jacquelyn and decorations from Nancy's mom

Mail from my mom, dad, sister and Auntie Jo!  THANK YOU! It's beginning to look like my wall in Australia

Courtney and Shawn's House - pretty much the same set up as ours